Boron and its Compounds in New Energy and Materials Fields

Abstract

Boron and its compounds play an important role in modern energy and material sciences for the bight application prospect. The applications of boron and its compounds in material fields especially advanced materials including permanent magnetic, superconducting, boride cermets, boron-based fuel-rich propellants and borate whisker materials were summarized in this paper, and the new trend for the exploitation and application was also pointed out.

Phase Equilibria and Phase Diagrams for the Aqueous Ternary System Containing Sodium, Sulfate, and Metaborate Ions at 288.15 and 308.15 K and 101.325 kPa

“…6 Particularly, the concentration of borates (expressed by B 2 O 3 ) in the Qaidam Basin in western China could even reach more than 3 g/L, showing great application potential and strategic significance. 7 It is worth mentioning that the brine belongs to the complex seven-component saltwater system (Li + , Na + , K + , Mg 2+ //Cl − , SO 4 2− , and borate-H 2 O), which was verified by previous reports. 8,9 In order to synthetically utilize the brine resources, it is essential to comprehend the physiochemical processes occurring in salt lakes, such as concentration, crystallization, precipitation, and so on.…”

“…Benefiting from the diversity of coordination numbers of boron, the resulting borates that are catalytic, flame-retardant, and heat-resistant, which are excellent properties, therefore, show promise for extensive applications in the conventional glass and ceramics industry. Moreover, because of the significance of boron and its compounds in permanent magnetic materials, superconducting materials, fuel-rich propellants, and other modern advanced materials, boron and borates are considered as a kind of modern strategic resource worldwide. − Take China for example; the import of boron compounds exceeds 200 000 tons in 2016, and this is a 5.13% increase from 2015, which kept increasing in the last few years . Therefore, it is necessary to carry out further exploitation of borates.…”

Heat Capacities and Thermodynamic Properties of Pinnoite and Inderite

“…As shown in Figure 3, the heat capacities of pinnoite and inderite are all increased with the rise of temperature from 306.15 to 355.15 K, which shows that the structures of pinnoite and inderite are stable in these temperature regions, that is, neither phase transition nor other thermal anomalies take place within the temperature range of the experiment. In order to obtain the heat capacity quickly at a certain temperature, the molar heat capacities of pinnoite and inderite determined in this work have been fitted as equation (1) by means of a least-squares method with the correlation coefficients r � 0.99905 for pinnoite and 0.99924 for inderite listed in Table 3. On the basis of polynomial equations, the…”

“…Magnesium borates are widely used in many fields such as chemical industry, glass and ceramics industries, and superconducting materials because of the excellent performance [1][2][3][4], and the extensive application of magnesium borate also makes it a great resource to be developed and utilized in the world today. Fortunately, six natural hydrated magnesium borate minerals 2MgO·3B 2 [5,6].…”

Heat Capacity and Thermodynamic Properties of Cesium Pentaborate Tetrahydrate

“…Boron and borates are considered as a kind of modern strategic resource worldwide for high melting point, high hardness, high strength, light weight, and abrasion resistance, and they are extensively applied in whisker materials, superconducting materials, fuel-rich propellants, and other high-technology domains [1][2][3][4]. Nowadays, the continuously increasing demand for cesium borates owing to the significant physical interest [5], along with their limited production, has led to a situation where the supply fails to meet the market demand.…”